Trying to Get Out of the Box

New year greetings to you all – it’s not too late for that yet, right?  Another year gone, and a new year to fill in again with life and memories … new resolutions … new ideas … How’s your year been?

This year hasn’t been so productive for me with the blog.  Planning – again! – to do better this year. I thought I was finally making some progress towards the end of the year, then everything went boom! again.  Ok – new year resolution – better time management, so that I can get stuff done.

My first doodles for the year – I was falling asleep in a meeting.  Note to self: do not eat/finish lunch right before a meeting – you will surely feel drowsy … So, after being nudged a little more awake by a colleague rocking my chair, I picked up my pen and paper.  All I had was an orange post-it, but it will do.  Note to self:  next time, bring your doodle pad with you – or would that be too obvious?  lol

This is what I came up with.  My first free-hand mandala drawing.  It is a mandala, isn’t it?  or is it just a drawing?   I decided it was time to get out of the box, and make my first attempt at drawing mandalas, instead of just doodling, or drawing line and geometric patterns.   I enjoy looking at everybody’s drawings and mandalas, but at the same time, I don’t want to look anymore, because I want to draw it instead.  The more I look, the more ideas I see that I want to do, but I don’t want to copy other works.

I think I’m getting there.  I’m slowly coming out of the box with the drawing and the designs and the tangles.  I showed Justin a tangled doodle, and he said it was all lines.  I thought there was a design and pattern to it – and there was, for me – but for others, it came out looking like all lines, so clearly, there was something more that had to be done and changed.

I’ll work on this some more in the next meeting – fill in some of those spaces, add a curl here and there, add shading … I’m getting there …